154 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



fish, whom the country people calls sometimes " the sea- 

 devil," sometimes " the sea-angel," but whose more regular 

 cognomen is, I believe, " the sea-angler." Tiie first name he 

 owes to his excessive and wicked-looking ugliness ; the 

 second must have been given him ironically ; whilst the third 

 is derived from his reputed habit of attracting fish to their 

 destruction by a very wily ruse. He buries himself, it is 

 said, in the sands by scraping a hole with his two most un- 

 seemly and deformed-looking " hands," which are placed 

 below what may be called his chin. Being in this way 

 quite concealed, he allows some long worm-like appendages, 

 which grow from the top of his head, to wave and float above 

 the surface of the sand : fish taking these for some kind of 

 food are attracted to the spot, when the concealed monster 

 by a sudden spring manages to engulph his victims in the 

 fearfully wide cavity of his mouth, which is armed with 

 hundreds of teeth sloping inwards, and as hard and sharp 

 as needles, so that nothing which has once entered it can 

 escape. So runs the tale, the exact truth of which I am not 

 prepared to vouch for. 



A rare and singularly formed fish was once brought to me 

 during the month of August by the fishermen. It is called 

 the " Deal fish," or, locally, the " Saw fish." The latter name 

 is very expressive of its shape and proportions, the fish being 

 flat vertically instead of, like a sole or flounder, horizontally. 

 The following is the description of the fish which I set down 

 at the time : 



Length, 3 feet 6 inches. 



Depth, 7 inches. 



Greatest thickness, between half and three quarters of an inch. 



Colour, bright silver, with one very thin crimson fin running the whole 



length of its back. 



The tail very transparent, fan-shaped, and of a bright crimson. 

 A large flat eye ; 

 And a small mouth, which the fish had a peculiar power of elongating to a 



considerable extent. 



It had managed to get hooked through the back by a com- 

 mon haddock-hook. I wished to have preserved the skin, as 

 I believe that there are not above one or two perfect speci- 

 mens extant ; but, unluckily, through a mistake the fish was 

 destroyed. 



August 4=th. We caught a young woodcock full grown in 

 one of the woods near here. A dog disturbed it in the cover ; 

 and it flew fluttering into the road, where it allowed itself to 



